enough

It's incredible, to see where I am, compared to where I was a year ago. From rock bottom, I've managed to pull myself to a fairly decent place. Not without loads of help, of which I am very appreciative. I'm proud of myself for getting better at wanting to get better. It's been a rough year, but I think I'm in a pretty good place right now.

Which isn't to say things are perfect. My mood has been volatile again lately. Everything in my life seems very uncertain at the moment, and the lack of stability is both exciting and terrifying. I found out today my seasonal job ends in a week, and I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with myself when 1) my income source is gone, 2) I'm not working 6-7 days a week, and 3) no longer have an excuse for neglecting myself, along with my relationships, among other things. For a number of reasons, I can't wait for this job to end, but ultimately, I will miss it. Rather, I will miss a lot of the great people I had the privilege of meeting. I miss a lot of people all the time, including ones I stay in touch with, and I have a really hard time with more permanent goodbyes.

Mostly, I'm trying to be positive about my job ending. I'm feeling relatively optimistic about finding another job, and in the mean time, I have interning to keep me busy. I turned down a second internship recently, just because I don't have the time for it, and I felt it would just make me more stressed and more exhausted.

Exhaustion has been a problem for me lately. I work 32-40 hours a week at my job and 14-16 hours a week at interning. Yet, I welcome it. It's a great distraction, and helps me think less, feel less. I work, eat (sometimes), sleep. I don't have much time for friends or family. I stayed in New York over Thanksgiving and my birthday this year, and nearly decided to stay here for Christmas. It was just easier. For New Year's Eve, instead of going to any of the parties I was invited to, I plan on staying in and going to sleep early, and I don't mind it. I guess I'm kind of a workaholic. I've always liked to keep busy with things I enjoy, and it's gotten harder and harder for me to find things to take joy in.

Keeping busy helps me ignore the fact that I constantly feel like something(s) is missing in my life. I know I have more close friends, more people I can wholly trust, than most people do, and for that I really am grateful. But at the same time, I find myself feeling lonely and extremely vulnerable to any kind of attention, and that's dangerous. My sense of self-worth is still mostly nonexistent, which has led to me making some serious mistakes in the past year. I've gotten pretty good at treating these mistakes as life lessons, and haven't beaten myself up over them too much, and that's been hard for me.

And now my self-consciousness and fear of an unhealthy level of narcissism is kicking in and so I'm stopping.